It doesn’t always make sense to separate project management from business analysis tools. A stakeholder register is one example, and a RACI matrix is another one.
It doesn’t matter who creates it — both roles need to refer to these artifacts, and both will likely contribute and help maintain it.
RACI matrix stands for Responsible |Accountable | Consulted | Informed.
It concerns itself with the level of stakeholder responsibility for each project deliverable and is one of the first and most frequently used tools for project governance.
The accountability for building and maintaining a RACI matrix falls squarely on the project manager (or equivalent). However, a business analyst (BA) will have a particular interest in the section related to requirements analysis and approvals.
And the law of the jungle still applies: whoever needs it most (or first), will be the one doing it (or starting it).
So let’s not break the spears over who should create it. Each project needs one, and for a BA, this is a key stakeholder management tool.
Here is how a RACI matrix is built and used.
RACI Matrix structure
A typical matrix will list key stakeholders or group leads in columns. It does not have to list every stakeholder from the register and instead may group them by level or responsibility.
The rows will represent major tasks or deliverables, sorted in the order of delivery. These will often be grouped by phases.
Each cell will indicate the role of the stakeholder in executing each of the tasks:
- R=Responsible (does the work — at least one per task)
- A=Accountable (assigns, delegates, reviews and approves the work — one per task)
- C=Consulted (provides input, data, or expertise — any number per task)
- I=Informed (requires updates — any number per task)
When a BA and a PM collaborate to develop a useful RACI matrix, it will have a more detailed section related to requirements ownership, which is essential for business analysis activities. It would capture:
- Stakeholders responsible for major groups of requirements, essentially business leads that will be key participants in requirements discussions and reviews.
- Persons accountable for signing off on requirements or serving as an escalation point in case of requirements conflicts. It is especially useful that a RACI matrix assigns one accountable person for each task, which creates necessary accountability for making difficult decisions related to requirements, prioritization, handling gaps, and promoting or deferring features. Those accountable often rely on the feedback of responsible stakeholders, as they typically sit at a sponsor or executive level and rarely have enough capacity for getting into details.
- Subject matter experts (SMEs) will be listed as consulted, although when a RACI matrix gets too big, it may just list the department or a department head. Consulted category designates sources of information, such as understanding of the current process, rules, or stakeholders who can provide data and reports. Consulted stakeholders may include groups that become sources of specific requirements, such as security, audit, compliance, or privacy. They may not take an active part in project meetings or business acceptance testing, but their inputs are necessary for completeness.
- Capturing who needs to be informed about various requirements tasks will correlate with impacted departments and stakeholder groups, driving not only the dissemination of requirements and analysis decisions, but also planning for change management activities. For the informed stakeholders, the granularity of the RACI matrix will capture what phases or deliverables they need to be informed about. This will supplement communication needs captured in the stakeholder register.
Business analysts often need to add more rows to RACI to satisfy their interest in clear accountabilities for the requirements analysis process. This is normal — most project artifacts are a collation of inputs from core project team members.
As with other key project management artifacts, the RACI matrix must be posted in a visible location accessible to all project members, with a clear procedure for updates and a designated owner. It may change throughout the project, but the changes will be more controlled and often result from contractual negotiations or project role reassignments.
You may get my RACI Template as part of the Business Analysis Playbook, or create your own.
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